Praising Wonks

Wonk?noun [C] U.S. INFORMAL: A person who works or studies too much, especially someone who learns and knows all the details about something: = As the NEC?s deputy for domestic policy issues, Sperling has functioned as both policy wonk and political guru. ? Cambridge Dictionary

?Wow. You cover water policy!? I said aloud when I first met the now-coeditor of this publication. Silently, I added, ?More of a wonk than I am.? That was a compliment. Honest. The way I figure it, if you want to build a Web site, you find a geek. If you want to build tangible energy policy, call a wonk. Politicians needn?t be wonks. Politicians should have the Big Picture??I want birds singing, bees buzzing, and happy constituents who don?t have to pay high prices for electricity and gas. And there will never be blackouts in the Garden of Edification.? Or something to that effect. And the Big Picture person surrounds him- or herself with people to carry out that vision. The best people to do that are policy wonks. I appreciated that about former governor Jerry Brown?s administration. Brown could sleep on a futon (back when it was a mattress on the floor instead of the more fashionable modern version). He could eschew the governor?s mansion. He would drive a powder blue Plymouth. But he thought Big Thoughts. And the best thing about him back then was that he had the acumen to find daring, vibrant, workaholic wonks to carry it out. Of the 68 people on governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger?s transition team, I can find few, if any, wonks. Being interim, perhaps those people are the ones finding the wonks to do the job in the long term. There are far more farm interests and education and arts authorities than energy specialists whispering in the new governor?s ear. In fact, despite the public?s attention to Schwarzenegger?s energy plans immediately after the election, there are no energy experts on the transition committee. The closest thing to an expert is former California Public Utilities Commission member Jessie Knight. And he doesn?t seem to be raising issues other than a renewed push for direct access. Knight appears more interested in nonenergy issues these days, and his current advice is based on judgments he made a decade ago when he was at the commission. Also on the interim team is Republican state senator Jim Brulte, who coauthored deregulation legislation AB 1890. But since summer 2001 when he called for an investigation into long-term power contracts, Brulte has distanced himself from deregulation and left the mercurial Senator Steve Peace to hold the AB 1890 bag. In the last year, Brulte has focused more on crime and the budget while continuing to champion paving over the Inland Empire and the desert to accommodate expansion of Los Angeles into his district, Rancho Cucamonga. (I can say that, having grown up there in the days when it was nothing but lemon orchards, some tacky post?World War II stucco houses and choking smog blown in from L.A.) Schwarzenegger does have a few more people advising him who lived through the energy crisis on a political level?but only peripherally. Former Assembly speaker Bob Hertzberg attempted to hustle Southern California Edison?s bailout through the legislature during the governor?s extraordinary sessions on energy bills. That measure?aimed at keeping the utility out of bankruptcy?failed. Democrat Hertzberg also supported a plan, supported by Governor Gray Davis, to pay off utility debts in exchange for hydroelectric generation facilities. That, too, failed. Also advising the governor-elect is State Senator Dave Cox, an extremely conservative Republican. Cox was at least pulling his voting lever on the Capitol floor during the energy crisis. He trumpeted his support for the bill that allowed the Department of Water Resources to start buying energy on behalf of utilities. At the time, Cox said, ?The only way to reduce the cost of electricity to all consumers is to increase the total supply of available electricity.? He said supplies were not being built because ?our permitting process is so burdensome.? Rick Caruso, a developer, Los Angeles police commissioner, and chair of the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power during the energy crisis, is now on the transition team. During Caruso?s tenure, LADWP was found to have made a $200 million profit on sales of about $680 million during the energy crisis. That may have been simply shrewd business on LADWP?s part, because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently dropped its pursuit of charges against LADWP for gaming the system. Although the state Attorney General?s Office said it wanted to continue to pursue LADWP for gaming, the new administration will likely not support that effort. Former State Senator James Nielsen will likely be a biomass advocate to Schwarzenegger given he is president of a rice straw?to?cogen business. However, it appears to be his farming?not energy?expertise that he contributes to the transition team. There might be a wonk somewhere on the transition team, but I can?t find any. I fear that while the public is anxious to have a new energy policy along with a new governor for the state, no wonks are working long hours on the next step for the market. Without energy wonks, there?s no policy. Perhaps I?m looking at it the wrong way, or maybe I should change my definition of a wonk to fit the character of the new California politics. No more sincere wonks that slave away for the likes of the old Governor Moonbeam. The new wonk will be more like: Wonk: pronunciation: 'w?[ng]k, 'wo[ng]k Function: noun Etymology: origin unknown. Date: 2004 = After sifting through reams of technical standards, Jay Leno distilled new policy for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger outlining the cadence of all gubernatorial sound bites; e.g., ?Hasta la rate allocation, baby.?

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